The present application claims priority upon Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-197026 filed on Jun. 28, 2001 and Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-245432 filed on Aug. 13, 2001, which are herein incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates to an improvement of a technique for controlling printing according to a printing medium (throughout the present specification and claims, also referred to as a xe2x80x9crecording mediumxe2x80x9d). For example, the invention relates to control of printing using a long, rolled-up printing medium (referred to as xe2x80x9crolled printing mediumxe2x80x9d in the present specification and claims).
While the present invention is applicable to various printing media, such as paper and CDs (Compact Disks), the following explanation will be exemplarily given in terms of paper.
(1) In general, a printer driver contains print-control information respectively according to a plurality of types of paper. Upon printing, the type of the printing paper to be used is designated by a user, and printing is controlled based on the print-control information according to the type of the designated paper.
Now, for example, when a new type of paper not contained in the plurality of types of paper set forth above is added, the printer driver containing and capable of using the print-control information adapted to the new type of paper, i.e., an upgraded printer driver is provided in a predetermined server. When a printing result adapted to the new type of paper is desired, the user operates a printing apparatus loaded with the printer driver so that the printing apparatus accesses the above-mentioned predetermined server and downloads the upgraded printer driver from the server, in order to upgrade the current printer driver.
However, it is troublesome to download the upgraded printer driver by taking the trouble to operate the printing apparatus every time the new type of paper is added.
(2) Conventionally, there is known a printing system carrying out a printing process for a roll paper formed by winding a long, strip-form printing paper on a surface of a core many times. In such a printing system, there has been proposed a system in which, by mounting a semiconductor memory element storing a paper-thickness information of the roll paper on the core, a gap (platen gap) between a printing surface of a print head and a surface of the roll paper on the platen is controlled based on the paper-thickness information read out from the memory element.
Meanwhile, in the printing system relating to the foregoing proposal, while the platen gap is automatically controlled according to paper thickness of the roll paper to be used, it does not have a construction for automatically adjusting a driving range of the print head in the main-scanning direction according to a width of the roll paper and for freely varying the platen gap according to the type of the roll paper. A major reason is that the semiconductor memory element does not store information relating to the width of the roll paper or information relating to the type of the roll paper, other than the paper-thickness information. Therefore, adjustment of the above-described driving range of the print head, adjustment of the platen gap so as not cause grazing of paper when the roll paper to be used is of a material (type) which easily forms creases due to the ink dots ejected from nozzles, and other such adjustments are left for manual setting by the user through the printer driver in a host device.
Therefore, for example, when the user erroneously sets the width of the to-be-used roll paper to be B4 size while the actually-used roll paper has the width corresponding to A4 size, a problem arises in that a printing range exceeds the width of the roll paper. On the other hand, when the platen gap adjusted by the user is inappropriate, a problem may occur in that paper will graze the print head due to creases formed in the roll paper by the ejected ink dots. Furthermore, in the foregoing printing system, since the system is not constructed to automatically correct an actuating timing of the print head (a timing for ejecting ink from the nozzles) upon bidirectional printing according to the paper thickness of the roll paper to be used, difficulty is encountered in implementing a high-quality, bidirectional printing with the printing system set forth above.
A first object of the present invention is to enable appropriate printing according to a printing medium. Further, another object of the present invention is to enable printing according to a new printing medium when the new printing medium is added, without the user taking the trouble to carry out an operation to enable printing according to the new printing medium.
A printing apparatus according to a main, first invention has a printing medium, print-control information, identifying means, determining means, and controlling means. Here, a printing medium has a storage element storing print-control information adapted to the type of the printing medium. The print-control information is provided in advance in the printing apparatus. The identifying means identifies the type of the printing medium being set. The determining means determines whether or not print-control information adapted to the type of the printing medium identified by the identifying means is included in the print-control information provided in advance. The controlling means controls printing using either the print-control information provided in advance or the print-control information stored in the storage element according to the result of determination by the determining means.
A second object of the present invention is to enable high-quality printing for the recording medium. Another object of the present invention is to avoid occurrence of grazing in view of the print head due to creases formed on the recording medium used in the printing system. Furthermore, another object of the present invention is to avoid discrepancy between a width of the recording medium to be used in the printing system and a set driving range of the print head in a main-scanning direction.
Therefore, a printing system for printing on a recording medium according to a main, second invention includes the recording medium, reading-out means, and adjusting means. Here, the recording medium has a medium-information storing means storing information relating to the medium. Further, the reading-out means reads out information relating to a thickness of the medium from the medium-information storing means. Further, the adjusting means adjusts the actuating timing of the print head upon bidirectional printing based on the read-out information relating to the thickness.
Features and objects of the present invention other than the above will become clear by reading the description of the present specification with reference to the accompanying drawings.